Peter Pan Syndrome
by Destined To Repeat
Summary: Your run-of-the-mill investigation goes very weird very fast. Turns out ghosts don't do good things for Detective Gurski's blood pressure, Li Mei is the only one who has any idea what's going on, and it's STILL not Kangai's fault. Really.
1. Chapter 1

It was slightly troubling, Kangai supposed, that he was rapidly becoming accustomed to being in the backs of police cars. Almost all of which were driven by Detective Gurski, he felt compelled to add, glancing at the detective in the driver's seat in front of him.

This time at least they weren't on their way to the police station for hours of interviewing and paperwork, or worse, that stupid 48-hour law... This time it was a lost child report. Sixteen-year-old Jonathan Hade, a popular student and a talented basketball player, had been missing for the past two days. His parents had big connections with the police, and had requested that their top investigation crew be dispatched to find their son.

The top investigation team was busy with some sort of FBI something that had been discussed before Kangai's coffee had kicked in. The point was that the police had opted to send Aki, Naoki, Li Mei, and Kangai instead. And where they went, their handler went.

Which, today, was the forest-dotted Sacades mountaintop. They'd been driving for close to two hours already, taking the only way up – a winding road around and around and around the mountain. It would have been hideously boring if not for the impending fear of toppling off the too-narrow dirt road and tumbling down the mountainside to their dooms.

After two hours of minimal conversation, no coffee, and the same repetitious scenery, Kangai's eyelids were becoming increasingly hard to lift. He leaned his head against the window and let himself fall away into lovely oblivion –

—just as the tire blew, Gurski cursed, and the car began to swerve in jerky, unpredictable hiccups.

As if on cue, Aki and Detective Gurski began shouting at each other. Kangai was about to inform them that now was really not the time, when Li Mei beat him to it.

"We'll need to jump," she said calmly.

The next left turn was approaching rapidly. Unfortunately, if there was no wheel then there was no way to make the turn. And if you didn't make the turn, there was only one way to go – straight into ten thousand feet of empty air and the concrete below.

"JUMP!" Kangai yelled. He unsnapped his seatbelt, shoved the door open, and tumbled out as Aki, Detective Gurski, Naoki, and Li Mei did the same. Li Mei had been sitting in between Kangai and Naoki in the back seat of the police car, so she really had no right to pull off her vault so gracefully, but Kangai had other things to worry about than that; specifically, the stinging cheek and shoulder that he'd inadvertently scraped against the ground on his way out.

He sat up groaning as the car drove straight into the open air. They watched in a sort of horrified awe as it plummeted out of sight. A few moments later there was a crash that sent electricity skipping down Kangai's spine.

Gurski was the first to recover. "Is everyone okay?"

There were a few scrapes and bruises all around (except for Li Mei, of course), but they were all in one piece.

"A-at least we made it nearly to the top," said Naoki, trying at an hopeful grin. "We can easily walk the rest of the way. It was awful timing, but I guess tires blow out sometimes..."

"I don't think so," said Detective Gurski in the sort of voice that always made Kangai want to break down and confess, even though he hadn't actually _done_ anything.

"What do you mean?" said Aki, brushing a long strand of hair out of her eyes, still looking at the detective with distaste.

"I caught a glimpse of the wheel before it ran itself off the cliff. That tire definitely didn't blow by accident. It looked like it had been shot out."

"Shot out?" Naoki said, his voice rising an octave in between the two words. "But that makes it seem like—"

"—like someone very badly wants to get rid of us," Gurski finished, letting his glare rest (as usual) on Kangai in particular.

"Contrary to popular belief," Kangai said loudly,"I am not, in fact, responsible for everything that goes wrong around here."

Gurski's retort was cut off by Aki's "I _told_ you we shouldn't have taken the police car!"

"What does that have to do with it?" the detective said testily, turning his ire on Aki instead.

"Whoever took Jonathan probably saw the police car and assumed we were here to arrest him, making him desperate enough to try and kill us all before we found him out!" Aki crossed her arms across her chest, glaring right back at Gurski."If we had just taken our car, _like I said_, this never would have happened!"

Li Mei, meanwhile, was gazing expressionlessly at the mangled car beneath them, lost in thought. Naoki was watching helplessly as the bickering between Aki and Gurski escalated into an all-out "this isn't the first time you've messed up like this" match. Nobody but Kangai seemed to notice the strange, cold patch of mist next to the dirt path.

_Hmm..._

He went to touch it, but it moved farther away. _Ah,_ Kangai thought, feeling both sick from the ache of death in the pit of his stomach and oddly triumphant. He followed the gently pulsing mist deeper into the forest, doing his best to avoid tripping or being smacked in the face by stray branches along the way.

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

He'd hoped to find the body and make his way back to the rest of the group before they noticed he was gone, but that hope become more and more unlikely as he trudged onward. He'd been walking for fifteen minutes already...

Finally they (that is, the mist and he) arrived at a small spot that had been cleared of trees, allowing the sunlight to filter in and bathe the clearing in an unearthly sort of light. It would have been quite beautiful if not for the corpse facedown in the mud. Kangai crossed the clearing, preparing himself for the inevitable.

"Wait," said a quiet voice. Kangai _jumped_.

"Li Mei!" he half-shouted, recognizing the girl who'd appeared from the trees to his right.

"Let me get the others before we go any farther," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken.

"Li Mei," he faltered, trying to find the words. "Did you... did you see the mist too?"

She looked up at him, a gleam of malice in her otherwise blank eyes. "I saw no mist. I did, however, see you walking alone into a forest in which someone had just been killed."

He laughed nervously. "Right... Didn't think about that..."

She tilted her head, studying him. At last she said, "I will tell the others where the body is. It will not take me long."

"All right. I'll be here."

She nodded, seeming satisfied, and disappeared into the forest as if she'd never been there at all.

Kangai took the opportunity to inspect the body. It looked about a day old (unfortunately he'd had enough experience to be able to tell), and the cause of death seemed pretty obvious – there was a gunshot wound in the back of the boy's head. A quick look at the boy's wrists showed that he hadn't been restrained. This one seemed to be the more straightforward sort of murder. There was just one extra thing to work out...

"I know you're there, Jonathan," said Kangai, not looking up from the body. There wasn't anywhere else to look, really. One of the biggest misconceptions about ghosts was that they looked like transparent versions of their old selves, but the entire point of death was that their souls were no longer attached to their bodies. In other words, ghosts were just souls without form, perceivable to some (i.e. Kangai) only as an unnatural mist and a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"Can you see me?" Jonathan—he presumed—asked, sounding surprised. "Can you... hear me?"

"Yeah." Despite himself, Kangai looked around for something else to focus on (_not_ the boy's corpse) as he spoke with the spirit. His eyes landed on a weirdly-shaped tree a few yards away. "What about you?"

"Yeah, I can hear you," Jonathan said. Now his voice was growing excited. "Can everyone hear me?"

"No, just me." He paused, realizing he wasn't acting very sensitively toward someone who had just died. "Sorry," he added.

"How come you can hear me, then?"

"It's... a long story..."

"Are you a medium?" Jonathan asked, not to be deterred.

"Uh, sure. A medium," Kangai agreed, wanting to move on. "We're here to bring your murderer to justice. Can you tell me who did this to you?"

"Nahh," came the sighed response, and Kangai closed his eyes and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. It would have been so _nice_ for things to go easily for once... "One minute I was alive and next thing I knew – bam! – I was dead. Not even a whispered 'goodbye, Mister Bond' in a thick Russian accent as I was shot. It was just... silence. And then nothing."

Kangai raised his eyebrows. "Were you really expecting such a melodramatic death?"

The voice paused. "Well, no," he admitted. "But it would have been nice. This is just so dumb, and anticlimactic."

Ghosts could appear for one reason only, and that was if the person had harbored a specific, burning desire to do just one more thing before he died. The key words were that the desire had to be both specific and burning; most people passed away wishing they could just do more in general, or thinking rather idly of a specific thing they'd always wanted to do. But if the person had just one dream that he had never been able to fulfill in his lifetime, that person would most likely find himself anchored to this world by his grief for that dream.

In this case, though, Kangai couldn't identify any specific, nor any burning, desire on the ghost's part that would keep him anchored to the world, apart from his disappointment at his lackluster death. What, then, was keeping him here?

"Can you think of anyone who'd want you dead?" he asked, as a start.

"Me? Do I come off to you as the sort of person who'd have deadly enemies?" Jonathan said dubiously.

"That certainly seems to be the case, Mister Bond," Kangai replied.

The ghost laughed. "Well, my mother's always hated me. I wouldn't be surprised if she did it."

"Uh... okay," said Kangai, not knowing quite what to say to that. "Anyone else?"

"My brothers?" said Jonathan speculatively.

The detective decided to switch tacks. "It's very likely that your murderer made some noise as they came up behind you. There are twigs all over the ground, it would be impossible not to step on at least one of them. Do you remember how loud the noises were? That would be helpful in figuring out if your attacker was a man or a woman, at least..."

"I don't remember," said Jonathan. "I was kind of... distracted..."

"Great," he muttered. Kangai kneeled on the wet forest floor next to the body. "I don't know if this is going to affect you, but...maybe brace yourself just in case."

"Brace myself for what?"

But Kangai's hand was already on Jonathan's body's cold wrist, and his head was starting to spin...

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

Jonathan watched the strange boy slump next to his own body, unconscious. That couldn't possibly be right...

"Hey," he called, rather awkwardly, realizing that he didn't even know the other kid's name. "Um, heyyyyy...!"

He didn't have a body anymore, but the mist that was his consciousness began to gather in a concentrated, pulsing cloud around the kid. He wished he had a hand, or something, so he could feel his pulse or shake him awake.

As this thought occurred to him, he thought he could feel some sort of dragging sensation, pulling him down and making his vision blur...


	2. Chapter 2

When he opened his eyes, he was somewhere else entirely.

"Oh!" A boy with long, white-streaked purple hair peered down at him. "He's awake!"

He sat up, wincing at the sharp pain stabbing through his skull. "What... where... am I...?"

"You're in the living room of the Hade family," said a girl who looked creepily like the boy, crossing the room and coming to sit next to him on the couch.

He clenched and unclenched his cramped fists, surprised at how tense his muscles were. Was that normal?

"Seems like you found some important information," she continued, still looking at him expectantly.

He felt kind of lost. "Did I?"

"Aki..."There was a petite girl with pure white hair and eyes that looked almost – red? - in the hallway, looking straight past him and gazing hard at the girl sitting next to him on the couch. There seemed to be a warning in her voice."He's too confused."

That was when the man in the police uniform stalked into the room, coming to stop in front of him and crossing his arms. "_What were you thinking?_" he ranted, his eyes flashing. "You just strolled into the forest, _alone_, when you KNEW Jonathan's body would most likely be there… For all you know the murderer was still there as well! You could have been killed! You probably didn't even stop and think for so much as a second what we all thought when we saw you lying there, _not moving_, next to the corpse—"

"Why don't we figure out what happened first before we start yelling at him," Aki interjected. Then she turned to him, looking at him with those same expectant eyes."Tell us everything, Kangai."

He played with a strand of hair nervously. "Can I just... ask one thing first?"

"Of course,"she said brightly.

"What's a Kangai?"

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

The silence that followed his question was so charged that he began to fidget with the hem of his t-shirt. "Did I say something wrong?"

"'Scuse us, Kan, we're going to have an executive meeting... We'll be right back." And with that, Aki grabbed the hands of the purple-haired boy and the petite girl, and began dragging them out toward the kitchen. She jerked her head at the policeman, signaling for him to follow as well. He nodded, seeming sort of shell-shocked.

He mulled over that. "Is Kangai my _name?"_

"What, don't you like it?" she asked, looking slightly offended.

He tried it out in his head. "No, I don't. It's a dumb name, isn't it?"

Aki let out a very forced laugh. "I guess so... We'll be right back, Kan. Don't move."

Kangai looked around the living room, and for the first time a sense of loss crept into his mind. He folded and unfolded his hands. "I should remember all of you, shouldn't I."

She turned back to him. There was something unreadable in her expression, but it seemed kind enough. "...We'll be back soon."

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

They were indeed back soon. They seated themselves around him, staring at him with a sort of helplessness that made him feel uncomfortable.

As he looked back at each of them in turn – the boy, the white-haired girl, the policeman – they looked away as if they'd been caught doing something wrong. The only one who held his gaze was Aki, who put a hand over his own. Kangai – the name felt weird even in his head – thought at first that it was comforting gesture, but she seemed to be concentrating on something. Suddenly she flinched and pulled her hand away.

"I – I'm sorry," he said, not knowing what he was sorry for.

Her frustrated look disappeared with an almost audible snap, replaced with a carefree smile. "What're you sorry for? So, can you tell us what you remember?"

"I... What if I don't remember very much?" he asked, trying to ignore the staring from the other three people in the room.

"That's okay!" she said cheerfully.

"What if I don't remember anything at all?"

Her smile faltered. "Nothing?"

He shook his head.

There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

"Well, then!" she said loudly, as if to dispel the gloominess that had descended on the group. "Better start from the beginning. I'm Aki Mizutani, and this is my twin brother Naoki."

"H-hello," said Naoki, shooting a nervous smile at him.

"This is Detective Mikolaj Gurski. He's, uh, part of our investigation team."

Detective Gurski rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. Kangai nodded thoughtfully to himself.

"You don't seem very surprised that we're part of an investigation team," Aki murmured with a pointed smile in his direction.

He shrugged."Honestly, this is all completely new... I feel like I'm in someone else's life. I don't think anything you say would surprise me at this point."

"Probably best," she said approvingly. "This is Li Mei. She's...well. She's a friend of yours. We all are." She paused, looking at Detective Gurski. Then she added, "Well, close enough to it, anyway." The detective rolled his eyes again, but there seemed to be the barest hints of a smile on his face.

"So what happened to me? I went looking for the body and I got knocked out?"Kangai asked.

She frowned at him. "We're not entirely sure what happened, what with your loss of memory and all. Hopefully it will come back soon. Something tells me whatever you found was a major piece of the puzzle."

"Maybe that's why they knocked him out," Naoki suggested. "Maybe the murderer saw him figuring out something important and wanted to make sure Kangai stayed quiet."

"But the murderer had a gun," Detective Gurski mused, putting a hand to his chin. "If he'd wanted Kangai silenced he had a much more reliable, not to mention much more permanent, way of doing it than just knocking him out."

"It's also weird that he didn't have any injuries," Aki piped up. "Which means that if he was knocked out, it was by some sort of chemical means. Maybe a side effect of the chemical is amnesia?"

Kangai found himself zoning out a lot of the conversation that followed. He was so tired... He leaned back against the couch and allowed his eyes to wander only to meet the gaze of the white-haired girl (_Li Mei,_ his brain supplied), gazing at him with open hatred.

Well, that was interesting.

He smirked at her and raised a finger to his lips. _Shhh..._

Her eyes flashed. She stood so fast that she seemed to blur, and promptly stalked from the room. The door slammed behind her.

Kangai allowed the wide grin to spread for the briefest of moments, while the others were still distracted. This was going to be _fun._

Aki, Naoki, and Gurski paused in their rapid-fire debate about Kangai's current situation. "Is she all right?" came Naoki's timid voice.

"I don't know," said Aki uncertainly.

Her gaze flickered to Kangai for a moment and he looked back at her, innocently confused. Aki smiled apologetically at him and got to her feet. "I'm going to go see what's up."

"Wait!" he cried, grabbing her sleeve. She looked around at him, surprised. Naoki and Gurski were looking a little bit taken aback as well. He was probably getting out of character again. Oh, well. That's what amnesia is for, isn't it? "I don't understand... Someone tried to kill me? Where are my parents? And" - now for the kicker - "w-why do I remember touching Jonathan's body and passing out? I don't understand anything..." He put his face in his hands, smiling despite himself. Even he was impressed by his own performance.

The couch dipped under Aki's weight as she sat back down. Yesss! "You remember," she said, a definite note of hope in her voice. "Do you remember anything after that?"

Uhhh... After passing out? What was that supposed to mean? "No..."

She sighed. "Where do I begin?" it wasn't a rhetorical question. She was looking at her brother.

Naoki tilted his head. "Maybe start with the kansei."

Detective Gurski was looking between them. "'Kansei'?" he repeated.

Aki nodded, completely ignoring the detective. "We need to talk privately." She took Kangai's wrist and pulled him gently off the couch. "Naoki, can you talk to Li Mei? Try to find out what's upsetting her." Naoki nodded and headed toward the kitchen. "And Miko," Aki said, pointing at him, "we need to get this investigation on the road."

He nodded, still looking at her strangely. "I'm on it."

She turned before he could say any more. "Let's go, Kan. You've got a lot of catching up to do."


	3. Chapter 3

She pulled him into his own bedroom and shut the door behind them. "You might want to sit down," she said.

He sat on his bed. She sat down next to him and let out a long breath. "I know this is going to sound like a joke, but I promise you that everything I'm about to tell you is one hundred percent true."

He waited while she collected her thoughts.

"There's something called Dragon's Blood. All of us – that is, me, you, Naoki, and Li Mei – have it. Dragon's Blood kind of...enhances abilities that we already have and makes them sort of... I guess the easiest way to describe them is psychic powers. I'm sure that you're going to remember more and more about yourself as we go along, so you'll realize that it's very different from the magic in kids' books, but for now it's the best summary we've got."

"Kangai" was definitely interested. "So what can I do?"

She tilted her head. "You seem to have an extremely empathetic relationship with the dead. If you touch a corpse, you can relive their final moments. You also feel it when someone is murdered nearby."

So that's what Kangai had been doing when he touched Jonathan's body. It also made sense that it'd been so easy to inhabit Kangai's body and consciousness.

"What about you? What can the rest of you do?" he asked.

"Li Mei can feel the emotions of everyone around her" - _Ahhh, I see..._ "Naoki has a perfect memory. He crystalizes his experiences and is constantly reliving them..."

"And you?" Kangai asked curiously.

_What do _you_ think, Kan?_ said Aki's voice in his head. She winked at him.

"Woah!" he jumped up, putting his hands to his ears. "How did you – can you teach me that?"

She laughed. "Sorry. We all have to stick with the kansei that we've got."

"Okay..." he sat back down. "I have one more question."

She stiffened, but met his gaze head on. "Anything."

"Did I have a crush on you?"

She blinked. Opened her mouth. Closed it again. "No," she said.

"Well, I definitely do now," he said, giving her his best boyish grin. No girl had ever said no to that grin when he was Jonathan.

She stared at him. The silence stretched on. "Um," she said. She seemed totally at a loss.

He felt a flash of anger. Who was _she_ to turn him down? "Do I have some sort of highly contagious disease that's making you make that face?"

She laughed. "No, but...you're practically like my little brother. It'd be gross."

Jonathan felt the sting of resentment in his chest, but masked it with embarrassment. "Shoot, I didn't know it was like that!" He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Sorry."

"That's okay!" she chirped. He was beginning to realize that when her voice got too happy, it was most likely because she was hiding some other emotion. "Do you have any other questions?"

"Just one, um..." he paused for a suitable amount of time. "It seems like Li Mei doesn't like me. Did I do something to her?"

Aki leaned back on her hands and sighed. "Li Mei is very...complicated, but I can tell you for sure that it's not that she doesn't like you. It could just be that she's picking up on all of our confusion and fear, and it's making her upset."

Maybe. But if she could pick up on the emotions of everyone around her, she definitely would have noticed that "Kangai" was actually a lot more calculating than he let on. Which means that she either knew exactly what he was, or at least she had a very good idea.

Maybe it was time to have a chat with Little Miss Psychic.

"Something wrong?" Aki's gentle voice interrupted his thoughts. He looked up questioningly. "You looked kind of...far away. Were you remembering something?"

He shook his head. "I thought I had the edge of a memory, but when I tried to catch it, it disappeared."

She looked disappointed, but smiled at him anyway. "That's all right. They'll come when they're ready."

_Not if I have anything to say about it,_ Jonathan thought.

"And now it's time for the real fun!" she said, standing. He noticed with no little annoyance that this time she didn't offer to help him up. "We've got to find out who killed Jonathan. Maybe doing detective work will jog your memory a bit."

The irony was not lost on Jonathan, but he knew better than to start laughing in front of Aki. "Great. In fact...I think I already have an idea of who might have done it."


	4. Chapter 4

She took him to his father's study, where his whole family had gathered to hear about his tragically untimely demise. Jonathan wished he could have been there to see it; to see their sobs of regret as they wished they could have appreciated him while he was alive... But now, more than three hours after they'd been told the news, his mother was the only one still crying. His brothers, on the other hand, looked far too okay for Jonathan's liking. Remy, his older brother, was standing with his back against one of the bookshelves and his hands stuck deep in his pockets, staring into space. His younger brother Will was murmuring quiet, soothing platitudes to their mother while she shook her head and refused to listen, sobbing too hard to do much of anything else. Jonathan was sorely disappointed that this was it – this was the extent of the drama generated by his death. And to make matters worse, he'd even missed the best part!

Ah, well... At least the fact that he was murdered would serve to keep things interesting for a while.

"I realize that this has been...a nightmare for you." It was interesting to see the detective anything less than perfectly composed. His eyebrows were drawn down in anger (which Jonathan had to assume was his default emotion), but there was also something rather...sad in the way he looked at Jonathan's family. "And I know the last thing you want is to have to relive your painful memories of the last few days. But if we want to bring Jonathan's murderer to justice, we're going to need your help."

For the first time, his mother looked up. Her face was red and blotchy, tear-stains streaking down her face like decade-old burn scars. She looked awful. Jonathan preened. "I don't – I don't – I'm so c-conf-f-fused..." she hiccuped.

The detective kneeled next to her, his voice going quiet and gentle. "It's hard even for us, who have been working in criminal justice for years, to understand why people kill."

"Miko..." Aki was glaring at the detective as if Gurski was the killer. He ignored her.

"I am going to interview you three individually. With your cooperation we will hopefully get all the information we need to wrap this case up quickly," Gurski continued.

"Uh, Miko," said Kangai. The detective started, and then turned and stared at him like he'd never seen Kangai before in his life. Aki and Naoki choked down giggles next to him. "Where is...Mr. Hade?"

Mrs. Hade's sobbing increased, if that was even possible. Miko sighed. "A very good question. One that I will remember to ask in the interviews." He paused, seeming to battle with himself about something. "And kid?"

"Yeah?" said Jonathan.

"Never call me that again. Got it?"

"What, Miko?" The detective twitched. Jonathan felt a familiar smirk spreading across his face. "But I like that name! It fits you. Don't you think, Aki?"

Wow, Jonathan had never seen anyone actually cry for laughing so hard. Aki wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and attempted to pull herself together. "I agree, Kan." Even Naoki was fighting back a smile. Li Mei, on the other hand, had her arms crossed tightly across her chest and her mouth flattened into a thin line. Geez, what a spoilsport.

When he looked back at his family, he realized that his mother was staring at him with wide, unfocused eyes. It was actually kind of creepy. "Umm... M... Mrs. Hade?"

She snapped out of it, seeming to draw into herself even more than before. Jonathan frowned. What was up with that? She couldn't possibly know it was him... could she?

"We're going to begin the interviews with... Jeremy Hade." Gurski read the name from his police file, nodding as Remy straightened and pushed off from the bookcase. "Is the kitchen all right with you?"

Remy shrugged. "Whatever's fine."

"Hey, Miko," he drawled, sticking his hands in his pockets. Miko twitched again. It was quite amusing. Jonathan wondered how long it would take before it stopped being so very entertaining. "Do I get to help?"

If Jonathan wasn't mistaken, there was a vein pulsing in the detective's forehead. "When I need your help, I'll beat it out of you."

Kangai blinked. "Is that a no?"

Aki made a strangled noise that seemed to be an aborted laugh. "That's a no."

"Aww..."

Gurski shook his head and began leading Remy out of the room. Jonathan sighed. Manipulating the interview sessions would have been _epic_, but he suspected he could wreak a good amount of havoc here as well.

Speaking of which... Jonathan quelled the urge to grin as he looked over at Aki, noticing that she was watching Gurski exit as well... but with a very different sort of frustration than Jonathan was feeling. It was almost too easy.

Once they had relocated to the living room to give Jonathan's family some space, he set the ball rolling. "Are you mad at him?" Kangai asked, jolting her out of her thoughts.

"Haha..." She was definitely looking uncomfortable. "Not any more than usual."

Kangai nodded. "I guess you heard what he was saying about you earlier?"

She froze. After a moment of – frankly – rather terrifying stillness, she said in a deceptively calm voice, "Jog my memory."

"He, well," Kangai played with some frayed threads on his jeans, looking appropriately anxious. "...are you sure it's okay if I tell you?"

"Of course!" she said brightly, but just the tiniest bit too loudly. Jonathan winced against his headache's sudden flicker of pain at the noise. She noticed, of course. "Sorry," she apologized, this time in a whisper.

"No worries," he smiled slightly. "Miko was just saying that he understands that you have a very hard job, and sometimes clues can be hard to find, but he can't respect the means you use to get what you want. He thought you were kind of...immature."

It was quite an interesting effect. Aki's facial expressions seemed to have iced over. "Did he," she murmured.

"Yeah, but, um," Kangai did his best to look placating now, "I'm sure he didn't mean it like he said it! Okay, maybe he said that he thought you were manipulative and shallow, but I feel like you guys talk about each other like that all the time! I mean, that's part of your relationship, right?"

"Right," said Aki, flashing him a terrifyingly blank smile.

He allowed the fear to bleed through his mask. "D-did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's just..." she seemed to deflate, suddenly looking lonely and much more tired than she seemed before. "Never mind. I'm going to get something to drink, all right?"

Jonathan didn't bother to point out her mistake; in order to get something to drink she'd have to go into the kitchen, where Remy's interview was being held. "Okay..."

She hadn't even left the room when Jonathan was already searching for his next victim. Ooh, Aki's twin-dude. What was his name? Notaki?


	5. Chapter 5

The boy noticed Kangai looking at him and came over, nodding at the door. "Is she okay?" he asked, concerned.

Oh, this was going to be too easy. "She's just frustrated, that's all."

"Frustrated about what?" Notaki asked, unquestioningly believing, obviously concerned. Jonathan both hated and perversely adored these easy, open types.

"She just felt that between Gurski being annoying, Li Mei being upset, you being rather useless, and me being effectively out of commission" - he shrugged wryly- "she feels like she has to do everything."

Notaki – or whatever his name was – had gone very quiet and very still. It was interesting, he got upset in the same way as his sister did. "Useless?" he repeated quietly. It was almost enough to make Jonathan feel bad for him. But, well. Almost is only just almost.

"Yeah... well, she was more talking to herself than to me... Something about how she wished she didn't have to baby you all the time, that she's saved your skin too many times to count and your sensitivities have basically kept you from returning the favor..." Hmm, Notaki was turning a lovely shade of white-gray. Maybe time to wrap it up. "I think she just wishes you would grow up. You know?"

Notaki didn't respond. His entire body seemed to be jammed into place, his eyes staring sightlessly ahead.

"Maybe I heard her wrong..." Kangai trailed off as Notaki wandered away in a daze, probably forgetting that Jonathan was there at all. He allowed himself a private little chuckle. Who said death had to be the end of having fun?

"Enough."

He looked up. It was Li Mei. Her tiny, delicate hands were fisted by her sides and, maybe it was his imagination, but she seemed to be trembling.

He tilted his head innocently. "Enough what?"

She seemed to struggle to find the words. "The confusion. The hurt. The guilt. It's...too much." She fell silent.

Ahh, Aki had mentioned that Li Mei could feel everyone else's feelings. Perhaps she was getting the backlash of all the intense emotions Jonathan was cooking up in her friends.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," he answered blithely, but the wide, pointed grin he gave her said otherwise.

Jonathan could have sworn that he heard her _growl_ – but that couldn't be right – just as the door to the living room opened and Miko came in, looking haggard. He glanced around the room. "Where are the twins?"

"I don't know," said Kangai, looking rather confused himself. "They started giving each other these looks like both of them suddenly understood something important that nobody else was privy to, and next thing you know, they just sort of _left_."

"That's pretty par for the course," said the detective with a sort of long-suffering air. Jonathan patted himself on the back for a job done particularly well. "I suppose I'll just start with you two, and whoever finds the twins first can fill them in afterward."

Aw, done so soon? "Have you found the murderer then?" Kangai asked with interest.

Gurski made a face. "Not even close. If I had found the murderer I wouldn't be discussing the information with you, would I?"

"I guess not," said Kangai.

"Anyway, the interviews left us pretty much back to where we started. All three of them are hiding something. None of them have a full alibi, but that could very well be because the possible time of death is so broad in this case. I did, however, dig up some interesting information from their police records and medical files," Despite his obvious tiredness, Gurski gave them a slight smile.

Jonathan didn't need to feign his curiosity. "What sort of interesting information?"

"Well, it seems like the whole family's a bit messed up." (Jonathan would've snorted if he could. What was your first clue, Sherlock?) "Mr Hade has been arrested several times on drug trafficking charges, and did time in jail twice. And it seems like his son has been walking in his old man's footsteps – Jeremy was recently arrested for the same thing, although he was let go on a plea bargain."

Not only that, but Mrs Hades was diagnosed with bipolar disorder over twenty years ago, meaning it is highly probable that at least one of her children, maybe more, has inherited the disorder from her." Gurski snapped the file shut. "Will is the only one who seems to be sticking to the straight and narrow, but that could be a reason to get suspicious as well. For now, I'm going to investigate Jeremy further, as he seems to be the most troubled out of the lot."

"What about Mr Hade?" Jonathan asked. Maybe whoever killed Jonathan had gotten to his father as well?

Gurski frowned. "He disappeared the day after Jonathan went missing, I suppose almost immediately after the call to the police. At first glance, the boys don't seem to know what happened to him, although they're both unsurprised by his disappearance. I am positive that Mrs Hade knows why her husband left, but she's in no condition to tell us. Just bringing up the subject made her extremely upset."

"Don't you think that's suspicious?" Kangai interjected. "Maybe she's keeping her mouth shut because she killed Jonathan, and then when Mr Hade asked where their son was, she shot him too!" Gurski didn't seem convinced. Jonathan felt the familiar anger building inside him. Why did none of them take him seriously? "Detective, she's _nuts_, you said so yourself! Isn't that reason enough to kill them?"

"Maybe," said the detective, but it was clear that he was only saying that because Kangai-with-amnesia was too delicate and too unpredictable to be blasted outright for his faulty conclusions. "I'd like to see what Aki thinks about it first though."

Jonathan saw his chance. "Maybe I should talk to her?"

Detective Gurski gave him a funny look. "You?"

"I mean, we _are_ together, after all. Maybe she'll tell me something she wouldn't tell someone else," Kangai said matter-of-factly.

Jonathan certainly appreciated the hiss of pain from Li Mei at that, but the best by far was Detective Gurski's horrified expression. "You're what?"

"Together," Kangai repeated, tilting his head curiously. "Didn't you know?"

"You and – and Aki?" he asked. His voice was going a bit funny. "Who was... Why did... when did this happen?"

Kangai tapped his chin, humming thoughtfully. "I don't know when it happened, obviously, but when we were speaking privately she told me that we were boyfriend and girlfriend."

"She WHAT?!"

Kangai backed up a few paces, lifting his hands in self-defense. "Sorry... I guess I just assumed that you would know. Although..." he furrowed his eyebrows. "It _is_ sort of weird that she told me not to tell any of you guys that we were together. I wonder why she would want to keep it a secret from her own team..." He shrugged. "But I definitely believe that the two of us are together, if that's the problem. I mean, honestly, she was _all over _me."

"She... That..." Gurski actually looked like he was about to faint. How cute.

_"Enough."_

Before he could protest, he was being dragged off down the hall by petite, delicate Li Mei (petite, delicate Li Mei who seemed to be pulling his weight with no effort whatsoever). Detective Gurski was so dazed that he barely noticed that they were no longer there. Li Mei pushed him into his own bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

"We need to talk, _Jonathan_," she said quietly.

"Then talk," he said, smiling.

She looked hard at him for a moment. "I want to talk to Kangai."

"Sorry, no can do." Jonathan laid his hands out in an I-got-nothing gesture. "He's not even in this body anymore. For all I know, he might be dead by now."

She flinched, but collected herself quickly. "Where is he?"

"Weeeelll..." He stretched out the word, enjoying the delicious anxiety on her face. It was a shame that he couldn't really manipulate her any more than that. She was too on guard with him, and he didn't understand her, anyway. "He took over my body, so I took over his. Fair trade."

She gritted her teeth, understanding dawning in her eyes. "But your body is dead. His is alive."

"Hey, he's the one who took my body first," he shrugged.

"You will come with me – " she grabbed his arm in an iron grip " - and we will go back to the forest, and you're to switch back with Kangai."

"Uh, I don't think so." He tried to pull away from her, and failed. "Look, Little Miss Psychic. I LIKE this body. I like being alive, being able to affect things, being able to be affected by things... You know what? I like this body so much..." He gave her a full-on mischievous grin. "I don't think I'll _ever_ get out of it."

If Jonathan had noticed that her eyes had gone blank and emotionless, or maybe noticed that her body had gone stiff, like a coiled spring, perhaps he would have stopped. As it was, Li Mei leapt at him like a feral cat, teeth bared.

"H – ahh, L-li Mei?" he rapidly backpedaled into the bedroom, feeling something else he never expected to experience again after his death – terror.

Her legs scissor-kicked far too close to where his head had been a second ago. "Li Mei, it's me!" he said in his best Kangai voice.

"You cannot play with me like you play with them," she intoned. There didn't seem to be anything human behind that voice...

He ducked a swing from her fist but couldn't see the knee going for his stomach at the same time. He groaned, and when he doubled over, she locked together both fists and smashed them into his head. He collapsed to the floor.

She stood over him, studying him impassively. Then she picked up one tiny foot and prepared to drive it through his skull. Something told Jonathan's addled brain that if she tried, she would succeed. He closed his eyes, thinking bitterly of how much fun there was still left to have.

And then the door opened. And the twins entered.


	6. Chapter 6

He took advantage of her momentary pause to leap up (ignoring the now-throbbing bruises) and run over to the twins. "Li Mei attacked me! All I did was say that she was weird, and yeah, I shouldn't have said that, but she was about to _kill me_ for it!"

The two of them looked back at him in stony silence. He kept going. "But I think the trauma helped me remember something important! I think it was Jonathan's last memories... I was in a forest, just minding my own business, when a voice – a female voice – said 'I never loved you, Jonathan. As your mother, who gave birth to you, I have the right to kill you as well.' And then I died."

This stunning revelation was met with dead silence. Maybe they didn't understand what this meant?

"So the murderer was definitely M... Mrs Hade. We should go arrest her," he finished.

"You're a nasty little ghost, aren't you?" Aki commented. She was smiling, but the hints of disgust were wrinkling her nose.

"G-ghost? Wh – do ghosts exist?" he asked desperately, at the same time searching for a way to get past the twins into the hallway so he could run.

"We didn't think so," Notaki said conversationally. The twins simultaneously stepped closer to him like they had planned it. "But it looks like we were wrong."

Too late. It was too late. He wasn't going to convince them of anything. The game was up. He let out what he hoped was a devil-may-care laugh. "How did you know?"

"Hmm...what did you think, was it very hard to figure out, Naoki?" Aki asked her brother sweetly.

"Not really, Aki," Naoki responded in the same tone. "He made so many _mistakes_..."

Jonathan growled. "If you're going to tell me, then spit it out already."

"First of all, you didn't act like an amnesia patient at all," Aki said, ticking it off on her finger. "When someone loses their memory they find themselves doing things that they don't remember learning how to do. They fall into their old habits and quirks and they don't know why. They don't form new habits or personalities. The way you were acting was totally uncharacteristic of Kangai. You weren't just showing a lack of memory; you showing completely different mannerisms, behaviors..."

"...and skills, like lying, which Kangai couldn't do to save his life," Naoki finished.

"Lying?" Jonathan asked, hoping against hope that they hadn't compared notes...

Aki put her hands on her hips. "You really thought Naoki wouldn't confront me about what I supposedly said about him? We may be investigators, but before that we're siblings."

"And before that, we're friends." Naoki looked sincerely angry now. Jonathan laughed nervously.

"You can't do anything to me," he said fervently. "I'm in your friend's body. Whatever you do to try and hurt me will just hurt him in the end."

Aki looked at him with an unreadable expression. "That's true. Which is why we're going to take you back to the forest, where you can switch back with Kangai." There was an unspoken _If there is still a Kangai to switch back with._

"No," said Jonathan, crossing his arms and stomping his foot. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Unfortunately, you don't really have a choice," Naoki told him pleasantly.

Jonathan looked at Aki. All of her former friendliness had drained from her face. Now she glanced down at him like he was something she might find squashed to the bottom of her shoe. Jonathan looked at Naoki, hoping for a moment of compassion from him, but he seemed to have transformed into an ice statue. Hating himself, he looked back at Li Mei. She was looking at him with something like victory in her eyes.

He let his shoulders droop, all of the air flooding out of him. "Fine. I'll go."

The twins relaxed infinitesimally, and Jonathan barreled through the small gap that formed in between them before they had a chance to react. "Hey!" they yelled in unison.

He sent a wild laugh over his shoulder as he ran down the hallway. "Nobody can outsmart the great - " He ran headlong into something solid where he did not recall there being something solid...

Detective Gurski stood before him, blocking the narrow hallway. Kangai turned on his heel to break the other way but the twins and Li Mei had blocked that way off as well. Jonathan turned once again to the detective, and immediately backpedaled. Li Mei had been frustrated and the twins had been disgusted, but Detective Gurski seemed... absolutely fire-breathing furious. There was an almost tangible aura of pure, crackling fury around the detective as he slowly pulled a pair of handcuffs out from his belt.

Jonathan gulped.


End file.
